MP3 At 3PM: Horse Feathers

“Belly Of June,” the first thing we’ve heard off Horse Feathers‘ upcoming Thistled Spring, summons a vision quintessentially American, bereft of city lights and traffic. Cellos, violins, banjos and acoustic guitars playfully greet one another like young 19th-century settlers running free across open plains, obstructed only by the weathered grandiosity that surrounded them. Justin Ringle’s whispery voice is the sheer modernizing force here, leading organic textures that would otherwise owe no debt to any one musical era. “Belly Of June” also has a strikingly graceful feeling; it invites us outside of our hurried, digital lives with a warmth and comfort passed down in earlier years by the folk pioneers who paved the way for Horse Feathers. Thistled Spring, the third full-length from Ringle and Co., arrives April 20 on Kill Rock Stars.